60,000 pounds of an explosive chemical went missing on a freight train traveling from Wyoming to California
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Kristen South, a spokeswoman for Union Pacific, the rail company that transported the chemical
About 60,000 pounds of a chemical used as a fertilizer and explosive went missing during a train ride from Wyoming to California last month, according to federal records.
An incident report filed by a company representative with the National Response Center on May 10 indicated that the railcar carrying ammonium nitrate left a plant operated by explosives manufacturer Dyno Nobel in Cheyenne, Wyoming, on May 12. April.
The missing chemical, which was released from an unknown cause, was discovered after the wagon arrived in Saltdale, California, an unincorporated community more than 1,000 miles from Cheyenne.
Ammonium nitrate has been a key ingredient used in both terrorist attacks and fatal accidents.
However, Kristen South, a spokeswoman for Union Pacific, the rail company that transported the chemical, said in a statement that the recent disappearance of the chemical should not threaten the public.
“The fertilizer is designed for terrestrial application and rapid absorption into the soil. If the loss was due to a wagon leak during transportation from origin to destination, the release should not pose a risk to public health or the environment,” South said.
“At this point in the investigation, we do not believe there was any criminal or malicious activity involved,” South added.
Dyno Nobel says it believes the material, transported in the form of pellets, fell from the railcar on the way to a rail siding (a short track connecting to the main track) called Saltdale, about 30 miles from the city of Mojave in the eastern Kern County.
“The wagon was sealed when it left the Cheyenne facility, and the seals were still intact when it arrived in Saltdale. The initial assessment is that a leak through the lower gate of the wagon may have developed in transit,” the company said through a spokesperson.
A representative for the Federal Railroad Administration said their ongoing investigation suggests one of the carriage doors was not closed properly, according to KQED .
The Federal Railroad Administration, the California Public Utilities Commission, Union Pacific and Dyno Nobel are investigating the incident, according to their representatives.
The missing substance was used in a 1970 bombing on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus that resulted in one death and several injuries, and in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people.
In 2013, ammonium nitrate was the cause of an explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, which killed 15 people, injured 200, and leveled hundreds of homes.